Chapter 10 Vincenzo #2
“You’re everything you hate,” he murmurs, and there’s that fucking look again—like he’s peeling me apart with his eyes and enjoying every second of it.
“That’s why you can’t stop looking. That’s why you shake when I’m this close.
You think I’m chaos? No, Vincenzo. I’m clarity. You just don’t like what you see.”
I grab his jaw roughly, and tilt his face toward mine.
Our mouths are a breath apart. His pupils are blown wide, and his lips part slightly like he’s waiting for it—whatever it is—while the blade trembles in my grip.
I push down; the skin splitting under the pressure—thin, neat, enough for the blood to roll down over his collarbone.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I hiss.
“I know enough.” His voice softens. “I know the only reason you hate me is because I am everything you were told you can’t be. I know you want me just as much as you want to destroy me, and that’s why you’ll never win.”
I freeze as if the blade was turned inward as that lands.
Because he’s right. God help me, he’s right.
He’s not just everything I was told I couldn’t be; he is everything I was told I couldn’t want.
He’s too loud, too free, and too unashamed.
He walks through this world without apology, without restraint, and, somehow, still commands power.
I was taught to earn everything through silence.
Through composure. Through sacrifice. And here he is, thriving while breaking every rule I’ve followed since I could walk.
I want his freedom.
“Say it,” he whispers, eyes locked to mine. “If it’s my name, say it out loud when you make the offering.”
I lean in, mouth next to his ear. “No,” I breathe.
“Coward,” he murmurs, smiling even as his blood stains the floor.
I grab his wrists, pin them above his head, and force his body to still. But he arches beneath me, and I feel the truth I’ve been avoiding. The fucking truth I’ve buried beneath duty and bloodlines and the weight of a thousand years of Sicilian silence.
“You’re terrified,” he says. “Not of me. Of what you’d be if you let yourself want me.”
“I’d be ruined,” I whisper.
He tilts his chin, throat still against the blade. “Then let me ruin you.”
Like it’s just lust. Like all I have to do is give in, crawl inside that heat he’s offering with his bruised lips and bloodied throat, and everything will be fine after.
That it won’t matter that he’s a Dragovich.
That he’s the poison buried in my ribs. That his name is the one whispered in rooms where death gets dealt like cards, and that if I surrendered, I wouldn’t just be ending my own reign—I’d be handing it to him.
But the second I feel him move beneath me, the second I see that flicker of real hunger in his eyes—not just the hunger to win, but the hunger to be wanted—everything inside me stills.
For all his teeth and swagger and that silver-tongued arrogance, there’s a crack behind his eyes.
One I recognize. One I’ve hidden too well in myself.
He wants this; not just to provoke, not just to push.
But because some fucked-up part of him needs to be touched by something that makes him feel real again. Even if it kills him.
It makes me fucking furious because I understand and feel it, too. And if he thinks that gives him power over me, he’s forgotten one very simple truth.
I am the king here.
I breathe out slowly through my nose, calming the riot in my chest. My hand tightens around the hilt of my blade where it’s still pressed to his neck, and I shift my weight, letting my knee dig harder into the cradle of his hips.
He exhales a ragged sound—half pain, half pleasure—and I see the flutter in his eyes.
A betrayal of his control. The smallest flinch.
There it is.
“Look at you,” I throw his words back, letting my tone revert back into something cold, something controlled. “Bleeding for me already.”
He glares, defiant as always, but I can feel it now—how close he is to shattering beneath that smirk.
I lean down slowly, letting the blade pull away just enough so I can bring my mouth to the fresh wound at the side of his throat. The blood is warm, metallic, and still blooming. I flick my tongue out and lick it, dragging it from the open nick to the edge of his jaw.
His whole body shudders, but I don’t stop or look away. I press my mouth to his skin, then pull back to speak directly into the shell of his ear.
“You think this means you’ve won?” I whisper. “That I want you, so I must be yours?”
He doesn’t answer, and I smile. A slow, cruel curve of lips meant for war.
“Kings don’t bend for stray dogs, Nikolaj.”
He stiffens beneath me at the use of his full name. Because when I use it, I own him for a moment. I say it like a curse. Like a secret only I’m allowed to whisper against his skin.
And then I twist the knife—not the literal one still clutched in my hand, but the one I know will slice deeper.
“You want me,” I murmur, voice dark. “You’re the one who crawled in here, who bled for the chance to provoke me. Who got hard with a blade at your throat. And you’re still trying to pretend you have control? Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not dangerous.”
He snarls under his breath, jerking his wrists in my grip, but I pin him harder. He’s straining beneath me, chest rising and falling like he’s fighting for air he doesn’t want me to hear he needs.
“You were sent to kill me,” I continue, laughing quietly against his jaw. “And instead, you’ve got your back on a chapel floor, your mouth open for a Vieri, and your body begging for mercy I don’t fucking give.”
“I could still kill you,” he grits out, voice raw.
I drag the blade slowly from his throat, down along his jawline, to just below his ear, where his pulse thunders fast and loud.
“Then do it,” I whisper. He doesn’t move, and I grin. “That’s what I thought.”
I tilt the blade, angling the tip just so, and carve a small, sharp X just beneath his ear. Not deep or lethal. Just enough to mark. To stain. To remind him what it means to try and play a game he wasn’t bred to win.
He gasps—more from fury than pain—and tries to turn his head away.
I don’t let him.
“Now everyone will know,” I murmur. “That you belong to me.”
“You fucking bastard—”
I press my thumb to the mark, dragging the blood down the line of his throat in a streak.
“And yet you’re still under me.”
His glare burns. His lips are trembling, whether from ire or desire, I don’t know. Don’t care. Because the damage is already done. I’ve taken back control. I’ve ripped the power out of his teeth and made it mine again.
I drag my thumb through the blood, still hot and slick beneath his ear, and watch it bead beneath the pad of my finger. His mouth is parted—still furious, still trembling—but he’s not fighting.
I lift my hand, watching as his eyes track the movement, and smear the blood across my mouth in a bold, brutal stroke.
Nikolaj sucks in a ragged breath; it’s the kind of sound that betrays everything he hasn’t said.
He stares at my mouth like I’ve just made a vow in a language only we understand.
Like I’ve carved a claim with something older than words, deeper than touch, more binding than the stars we earn to rule this school.
And maybe I have, but this isn’t about lust. It never was.
It’s about legacy and two monsters bred in rival empires, shackled to bloodlines that would rather bury us in the wreckage than let us want each other. It’s about power, and the terrifying, soul-splitting hunger to be known by the one person who was sent here to unmake you.
His eyes flick to the blood on my lips, throat twitching like he’s trying not to show how much it affects him.
Too late.
“You think this means something?” he snaps. “That you’ve won because you drew blood first?”
I drag my tongue slowly along my bottom lip, letting the copper taste linger. Letting it brand me, too. “No,” I murmur, leaning in until my forehead presses to his. “I’ve already won because you haven’t begged me to stop.”
He stills, and that’s the fracture. The crack in the wall he built the moment he saw me.
I pull back to look at him, the distance between our mouths narrow enough to feel his breath, but not enough to touch. His pupils are blown wide, silver eyes ringed in shadow and hate. And beneath that—beneath the venom and ice—there’s want.
The kind that turns boys into sinners and heirs into heretics.
I release his wrists, stand slowly, and look down at him. He doesn’t rise or even speak. His throat is bleeding, marked twice now. Once from the moment I lost control, and again from the moment I took it back.
“Goodnight, Nikolaj,” I say softly. “Say a prayer to your saint. You’ll need it.”
And then I turn and walk out of the chapel, blade still slick with his blood, pulse steady, control restored.
But my hands still shake.